'''Cold Case''' is an
American hour-long fictional
television show about a police division that specializes in investigating old, unsolved crimes. The show is set in the city of
Philadelphia and first aired in September 2003.
Each episode begins with a flashback scene informing viewers of the featured year it takes place. A set of characters are revealed in a seemingly mundane situation. The viewer is then shown the corpse of the victim as he/she was found. It is always one of the people introduced in the previous seemingly-innocent scene.
The show then flashes to the present day. The detectives of the Homicide Division of the Philadelphia Police Department are told that new evidence has turned up in an old case gone cold in several cases:
★ New evidence has come to light;
★ The victim’s physical remains have been discovered;
★ A witness has decided to come forward, etc.
All or any of these cause the detectives to give the cold case a new look and begin researching the victim and interviewing their friends, acquaintances, and family.
The friends, family, co-workers, etc. who were introduced in the flashback at the beginning of the episode have aged (in one case, a six-year-old witness to the crime is interviewed by the detectives when she is 94). Gradually, the detectives gather enough evidence to determine the killer, who most of the time is then arrested.
At the end of each episode, the detectives mark the case solved, while an apparition of the murdered person looks on.
The problems in the detectives' personal lives are also featured, though the main emphasis of every story is on the victim and the search for the killer. Most notably, Detective Lilly Rush grew up in a severely dysfunctional, poverty-stricken home with an alcoholic mother.
Style
Critical reaction to ''Cold Case'' has been mostly favorable, citing its distinctive use of "
flashback" scenes-within-scenes, period music, and uplifting storylines.
''Cold Case'' is also notable for double-casting: it will cast a young actor for the flashback sequences and an older actor for the shots in the present, and cut back and forth between the two, to show how the character has aged. The episode "One Night" managed to triple-cast one character, showing him in the present day, when he committed his murder, and when he was a teenager. If the murder takes place within the recent past, i.e. one to five years earlier, the same actors are often used with subtle changes in appearance and with a few exceptions -- infants to adolescents. If the murder takes place in the distant past, i.e. 15 years plus, different actors with a few exceptions are used -- e.g. adult persons who are not likely to age significantly other than gray hairs and/or weight gain/loss.
Victims and End Scenes
Typically once the murderer is revealed, their confession is depicted in one final flashback in which the murder is shown. The episode then ends with a montage (with no dialogue) of the killer(s) being arrested, as well as the fates of other characters from that era, showing all of them in their current appearance, but briefly flashing back to their younger selves, and finally Detective Lilly Rush or someone else close to the victim seeing a vision of the grateful-looking victim standing nearby, who then quickly vanishes (this aspect of the show is meant to represent Rush's imagination, since the show is not about the supernatural). There have been numerous variations on this pattern however. In some cases the final vision is seen by another member of the team because of a connection to the victim, some cases do not end with an arrest or vision at all.
Notable unlikeable victims
Generally the majority of the victims are shown to be good people or truly innocent victims thus making the endings, in which the victims are seen one last time, rewarding for the victim's family and the viewer. There have been occasions where the victims were depicted as rather unlikable even despicable, being a sexual predator or child molester, making the endings somewhat bittersweet.
Interesting to note, most of the killings or crimes were either in the heat of the moment or accidentally and in some of those cases the viewer actually feels sorrow for the culprit. The aforementioned episodes seem to illustrate that point. The killings which are crimes of opportunity or premeditated, however, give us a clear picture of who the murderer is and what the viewer would like to see done to him or her.
Exceptions to some murder scenes
The scenes showing the actual murders are the theme in most episodes with some notable exceptions, such as the Season 1 episode, "Our Boy Is Back", the Season 1 Finale "Lover's Lane" and the Season 4 Episode "Offender". In those scenes the viewers see the immediate events precipitating the murder but then the screen fades out just as the final act is about to happen. This is due to the heinousness of the underlying crime which is included with the murder. In the aforementioned episodes the crime is usually rape or sexual assault of an innocent child or woman.
One exception is the episode "Revenge" where the victim, who died of drowning, is last seen swimming across the water in an effort to get to his family. That scene fades as he is swimming into the night.
Directional styles
Each episode, during the flashbacks, will feature a different style of direction, whether it be the colors, lighting, shading, or camera angles. Flashbacks from an era such as the 1950s have been shown in black and white, an episode with a case from 1939 featured sepia-toned flashbacks, one episode set in the '80s used a split-screen style, while a case from 1990 ("Sleepover") was shot with an effect that resembled a home video camera. In the oldest cold case ever investigated by the team, a 1919 homicide, the flashbacks are seen in the vaudeville reel film style used at that time with a fade-in opening sequence.
Some popular films have served as inspiration for several episodes such as "Disco Inferno" (''
Saturday Night Fever''), "Yo, Adrian" (''
Rocky''), "Creatures of the Night" (''
The Rocky Horror Picture Show''), "Detention" (''
The Breakfast Club''), "Dog Day Afternoons" (''
Dog Day Afternoon''), "Greed" (''
Wall Street''), "The Sleepover" (''
Heathers''), "Saving Patrick Bubley" (''
Saving Private Ryan''), "The Key" (''
The Ice Storm''), "Forever Blue" (''
Brokeback Mountain''), "Knuckle Up" (''
Fight Club'') "Blood on the Tracks" (''
The Big Chill''), "Shuffle, Ball, Change" (''
Footloose''), and "Stand Up And Holler" (''
Mean Girls''). Additionally, the episode "Bad Night" heavily referenced the movie ''
Halloween'' as having possibly inspired a murder.
Two episodes featured flashbacks shown in widescreen format. Season 3's "Family" had flashbacks that were presented with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio while Season 4's "Blood on the Tracks" had flashbacks with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio.
Music
The show's theme song is an excerpt from "Nara" by
E.S. Posthumus with an introduction by series composer
Michael A. Levine. Besides Levine's original music, each episode makes extensive use of era-appropriate music for flashbacks to the year in question. In an episode of a murder in 1994 (''Detention''), the episode featured references to
Kurt Cobain and added
grunge songs from the same era, a genre of music that Cobain had popularized. The fifth season premiere, also dealing with a 1994 murder, would later feature songs by
Nirvana, which Cobain fronted. Six different episodes exclusively used the music of
Johnny Cash,
John Mellencamp ,
Bruce Springsteen,
Tim McGraw,
U2, and
Bob Dylan, respectively. Also, there has been an episode featuring all ''
Rocky Horror Picture Show'' songs, as well as an episode with all
Cabaret songs.
One episode featured music from an era different than the one featured in the flashbacks. The episode "Blood on the Tracks", about former hippies turned yuppies, took place in 1981 but featured Bob Dylan's music from the 60s.
The episode that was taken the farthest back in ''Cold Case'' was the story of a suffragette who was murdered in 1919. This episode also features popular music of that year.
Rarely is the same song ever heard twice on the show. The sole exception being the fourth season episode ''
Forever Blue'' which replayed
The Monkees song "
Daydream Believer" first heard in the third season episode ''Debut''. This was due to the fact that "Daydream Believer" was a last-minute replacement as the producers had originally intended to use "
Happy Together" by The Turtles in '' Forever Blue''. The song "
Landslide" has been used at the end of two episodes, though not the same version: A cover by
The Smashing Pumpkins was used in the episode "Detention" while the original version recorded by
Fleetwood Mac was used at the end of the episode "Fireflies".
In the 2006 season, the music aired on the show during some episodes has been sponsored by
XM Satellite Radio, where music from the various years covered can be heard on XM's decade channels.
Characters
For detailed information on Cold Case characters see the main article:
List of Cold Case characters
★ Det. Lilly Rush played by
Kathryn Morris
★ Det. Scotty Valens played by
Danny Pino (Rush's partner)
★ Lt. John Stillman played by
John Finn (Rush's mentor)
★ Det. Will Jeffries played by
Thom Barry
★ Det. Nick Vera played by
Jeremy Ratchford
★ Det. Kat Miller played by
Tracie Thoms (Season 3-)
★ Det. Chris Lassing played by
Justin Chambers (Episodes 1-4)
CSI: NY crossover
On May 2nd, 2007 one of the ''Cold Case'' detectives made a rare appearance outside of the series. In the '' episode "
Cold Reveal", Danny Pino appeared as his ''Cold Case'' character Scotty Valens as he traveled to New York when it was discovered that CSI Stella Bonasera (
Melina Kanakaredes) was connected to an unsolved case. Some of the
''CSI'' shows have crossed over with each other at some point ('' and '', ''CSI: Miami'' and ''CSI: NY'') but this is the first time that any one of the three shows has interacted with a character from ''Cold Case'' and acknowledged that they all exist in the same world. The ''CSI'' shows and ''Cold Case'' all air on
CBS and are produced by
Jerry Bruckheimer.
Controversy
In 1998, a similar
Canadian series called ''
Cold Squad'' debuted, several years before ''Cold Case''. Fans of ''Cold Squad'' accuse the American series of copying the basic premise and characters of the Canadian version, and at one point the creators of ''Cold Squad'' launched legal action against the makers of ''Cold Case.'' Both shows air in Canada (and on the same network, CTV). ''
Waking the Dead'' is a similar
British TV series about a "Cold Case Squad", which first aired in 2000. Another BBC series,
New Tricks, also features cold cases being reinvestigated by a team of retired detectives lead by a woman. The series was first shown on TV in 2003 and stars
Amanda Redman,
Dennis Waterman,
James Bolam, and
Alun Armstrong.
Real life cases
A 2004 episode based on the "
Boy in the Box"
[1], a still-unsolved 1957 Philadelphia homicide, was criticized for giving viewers the false impression that the actual case had been solved.
This was not the only episode to use real events as inspiration. Some other episodes include:
★ The Pilot episode "Look Again" was based on the
Martha Moxley murder case in Greenwich, CT in 1975.
★ "Our Boy Is Back" was based on the actual case of
Troy Graves -- the infamous Center City Rapist.
★ The first season episode "Disco Inferno" was based on
the Station nightclub fire.
★ The 4th season premiere "Rampage" was based on the
Columbine High School massacre.
★ "Love Conquers Al" was based on the 1995 murder of
Adrianne Jones at the hands of Texas cadets
Diane Zamora and
David Graham.
★ "Late Returns" was loosely based on the
Chandra Levy case.
★ "Maternal Instincts" was based on the real-life cold case of
Cathleen Krauseneck.
★ "Strange Fruit" featured shades of the
Emmett Till murder, with even the victim's father comparing his son's murder to that of Emmet Till. Emmett Till would later be mentioned in the episode "Fireflies".
★ "Mindhunters" and "The Woods" were based on serial killer
Robert Hansen.
★ "Lover's Lane", the Season 1 finale, was loosely based on the tragic murder of 9-year-old
Krystal Dawn Steadman.
[2]
★ "Lonely Hearts" was based on Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, a.k.a. "
The Lonely Hearts Killers", who conned and killed women in the 1940s.
[3]
★ "Blackout" was based on the murder of
Florence Unger.
[4]
★ "Stalker" was loosely based on the murder of the Huling family in Minnesota in 1978.
[5]
★ "Schadenfreude" was based on the
Sam Sheppard case.
Episodes
A listing of episodes in chronological order can be found at:
List of Cold Case episodes
U.S. television ratings
Seasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of ''Cold Case'' on
CBS.
''Note: Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of
May sweeps.''
External links
★
Warner Bros. Cold Case official site
★
"Cold Case" at
Yahoo! TV
★
Cold Case - TV Wiki at
Wikia
★
Cold Case : Music at have-dog.com
★
Cold Case Music at
TuneFind.com
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